Hearing on proposal to bring Rassekh property into UGB set for September

Lake Oswego will soon make its case for expanding the Portland area’s urban growth boundary to the Metro Council.

Moving the line that limits urban sprawl is necessary for the city to build a new tennis center on what is known as the Rassekh property, an almost 10-acre site across Stafford Road from Luscher Farm. Officials say the existing tennis facility is overcrowded but can’t be rebuilt at its current site on Diane Drive.

In exchange for a nod of support for the proposal from the Clackamas County Board of Commissioners, the city council recently approved an agreement calling for Lake Oswego to participate in planning the Stafford and Borland areas, although some councilors were uneasy with ambiguity in the deal. The memorandum of understanding for Stafford planning doesn’t identify how involved Lake Oswego must be, and it doesn’t specify a level of detail required for the resulting framework plan.

“This is a consultant’s dream,” Councilor Jeff Gudman said. “It is for an undefined project, for an undefined time period with an undefined level of resources ... for an unknown outcome.”

City Attorney David Powell said the city’s initial attempt to expand the growth boundary to include most of its Luscher Farm properties sparked the county’s condition for support. While the city scaled back its proposal so only the Rasskeh property is included, county officials still want to make sure Lake Oswego won’t withdraw from the planning process if its needs are already met.

“The county wants assurances Lake Oswego will keep talking,” Powell said.

The Stafford area is about 4,000 acres overall, and roughly 1,000 acres of that is considered developable. Lake Oswego’s comprehensive plan states the city will not expand into the Stafford area. But Councilor Bill Tierney said things have changed since the city adopted that plan.

Metro councilors have since designated the Stafford area’s rolling hills and forested bluffs as an urban reserve, marking it as an area on the region’s edge that could eventually come into the urban growth boundary. That means Stafford, now a rural buffer between Lake Oswego, Tualatin and West Linn, would eventually accommodate future commercial and residential growth.

“The big change, in my mind, is that Metro has designated this as an urban reserve, which means it is intended that something is going to happen in that area,” Tierney said. “It will have an impact on this community. If we want to put our heads in the sand and disregard that ... we will suffer the consequences.”

Mayor Jack Hoffman said signing the planning agreement is simply an “acknowledgment that we have an obligation” to discuss Stafford’s eventual development with the city’s neighbors.

“They don’t want just one area or one city or one developer or one owner doing something that short circuits the process,” he said. “They want to be assured the Stafford basin is looked at as a whole.”

In September, Lake Oswego will have to prove its need to build a new tennis facility can’t be reasonably met on land already inside the urban growth boundary. But the discussion can’t happen until Stafford’s urban status is formally approved by the state, which hasn’t yet happened.

As a result, a Metro hearing on Lake Oswego’s expansion request has been postponed from Aug. 14 to Sept. 20, pending the final written order from Oregon’s Land Conservation and Development Commission.

Still, the state commission’s decision likely won’t bring an end to the debate over Stafford’s future. The cities of Tualatin and West Linn have hired attorneys to fight the area’s designation as an urban reserve.